How To Improve Your Office Coffee

Coffee is not just something you gulp down in the morning and every time you feel tired – it is actually a much wider field worth researching. That is why there are persons we call coffee lovers. If you’re one of them, you almost certainly have a hard time drinking your office coffee. It’s usually too strong or too weak, and when people start saying its ʽadequateʼ you know it’s become a necessary evil in your workplace. It can pass as much-desired caffeine hit, but we all know there are many reasons why you shouldn’t accept that.

Offices should be all about productivity, and if your cup of joe is intestine-wrenching you can say goodbye to that. If it’s simply drinkable you’re not getting that boost you’re looking for. This means it’s time to take the matter in your own hands and take your office cups of coffee from pretty awful to downright amazing.

Get Rid of The Old Taste

One of the reasons why your office coffee is tasting awful might lie in the fact that you’re actually tasting last week’s pot. Who knows, maybe even last year’s? Have you seen anyone in the office actually cleaning the coffee maker? These machines are often neglected, no one pays attention to the fact that they’re covered in dirt and coffee stains. No matter how expensive the machine in your office is, the quality of the taste will inevitably decline if you don’t clean old coffee oils and grime. Some people will say that you’ll need a cleaner specifically designed for coffee makers, but you can get the job done with the mix of one part white vinegar to two parts water. Make enough of this mixture to fill up the reservoir, throw the filter in and run the solution through. We recommend doing this more than once until the water in the pot is clear, all the nasty tea-color gone. Finish with two cycles of clean water to get rid of the vinegar smell. Now that your coffee maker is clean keep it that way by rinsing it every time a new pot is brewed.

Opt For Freshly Ground Beans

Taste doesn’t depend solely on the price of coffee beans. Even the mediocre ones will taste much better if they’re freshly ground since the grinding process releases flavor compounds and volatile aromatics. If we want to be more precise – and since we’re coffee lovers, we do – the point is to prevent the stale taste by decreasing the time between grinding and brewing the beans. By grinding the bean you’re exposing its surface and the very moment that surface hits the air it starts to oxidize and becomes stale, losing all the nuance. In other words, you’re saying goodbye to all the subtleties of the taste. So one of the easiest ways to improve your office coffee is to switch from pre-ground one to the whole bean one you’ll ground yourself. The process is a simple and quick one and there are many affordable grinders out there which are easy to clean and maintain, although you can even do without them.

Concentrate on The Brewing Process

Since you’re a coffee lover, you’ve probably read various articles on coffee preparation and figured there’s quite an array of options. It doesn’t matter which one you pick as long as you’re able to brew it properly. The problem arises when you realize that most of your co-workers suck at this and you don’t want to become the one that does all the brewing all the time. This doesn’t have to be their fault – although they may brew coffee regularly, they simply might be following the recipe they’ve learned from their granny which may not be so great. There are many factors that you need to get right, such as brew time, water-to-coffee ratio, grind setting, the right water temperature, etc. Obviously, there are many things that can go wrong. They could be using too much coffee, fully convinced that more is better, leading to overflows that’ll deposit grounds in the brew. They could get everything right and then turn the whole thing to chewy garbage by leaving it to sit on the warming plate where it’ll become over-brewed and distilled right down to a bitter mess. You could try to instruct them gently every time they’re making it, but your much better shot for better taste lies in some high-quality capsule coffee machine that will not leave them any room for mistakes. When people fail you, technology is there to make things right again.

Little Secrets for The End

Your co-workers might like the idea of grinding coffee themselves, or they’ll gladly welcome the help of technology. Either way, you still might be alone in this initiative with them just as passive supporters, especially if you’re office thinks new coffee practices don’t deserve a bit of u budget. But don’t worry, all you need to do is to turn them into coffee lovers just like yourself. And the best way to do this is to start a coffee club – once brewing becomes a relaxing activity everyone will want in.

Think in advance and keep the coffee outside the refrigerator or freezer, keeping the condensation outside the package. You don’t want its flavor deteriorated by water. Purchase a room-temperature airtight container that will protect its delicate flavors from water and air.

In the end, prevent your coffee from getting cold inside the mug before you get the chance to finish it. Fill it up with some hot water first and let it sit for a minute before replacing it with coffee you’ve worked so hard to get just right.